


Tertiary Structure (Or, a Discussion of Institutions)

by Soundingonlyatnightasyousleep



Category: Legion (TV), X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Canon disabled characters, Gen, Kid Fic, M/M, Mild Surrealism, charles is also a dad, charles xavier avoids his problems, dadneto, or possibly this takes place on the astral plane, questionable parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-09 22:32:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14724836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soundingonlyatnightasyousleep/pseuds/Soundingonlyatnightasyousleep
Summary: Charles takes David and his friend out for ice cream and that's all and everything is definitely normal.





	Tertiary Structure (Or, a Discussion of Institutions)

**Author's Note:**

> This fic started with me going "Why isn't there cute Cherik kidfic where David is characterized based on Legion?" and ended up somewhere around "The way David Haller is treated is essentially repeated institutionalization" except with more jokes so there you are. 
> 
> Based on throwing together stuff from the X-Men movies, Legion the TV show, and also a bit of House of M and other comics. This fic probably won't make sense if you haven't seen both the movies and Legion. 
> 
> Alludes to/possibly spoils Legion through 2x03.
> 
> Note: My version of Erik/Magneto (and the kids) are brown for a variety of reasons. See end notes.
> 
> Warnings for uhh... structural ableism, racialized ableism, unreality/surrealism, questionable parenting, casual sexism, and mentions of alcoholism and addiction. None of it is super explicit but it's pretty...there.

David’s bus dropped him off earlier than the bus carrying the rest of the neighborhood children. Charles waited anxiously on the corner alone, bundled up against the cold. He could go and pick David up from school himself if he had a car, but frankly, the thought of finally learning to use hand controls made him itch for a drink, so it was just as well. Spending too much time at home, spending too much time out, the thought of returning to teaching, doing pretty much any kind of drug, and countless other things also made him want to drink, so it was best to avoid as much of that sort of stimuli as possible. He was working on his self-awareness and such. 

 

Charles absently cast his telepathy out, skimming over a city’s worth of surface thoughts. He didn’t bother searching for David since the paras liked to keep a telepathy-blocking headpiece up until the very moment that he got off the bus, but the ripples of little Syd Barrett’s thoughts usually meant David was nearby. He couldn’t detect the orangey cast of her mind today, but here came the bus regardless. 

 

“Hi Dad.” The door opened and a blonde-pigtailed small body skipped floatily out. Another kid, wreathed in a heavy headpiece, followed with a more sedate pace. David and Syd were swapped again then. He sighed.

 

Dr. Bird had called today at lunch. “Mr. Haller. We had another incident with David....Have you been following his behavioral program at home? It’s very important to consistently use both positive and negative reinforcements across all environments; surely you don’t want him to regress. We’d have to transfer his case over to special education proper-”

 

“Mmm,” Charles had said, and then, “Dr. Xavier.”

 

“I’m sorry?” 

 

“My name is Dr. Xavier. David is--Well. Never mind.” And that had been that. 

 

“Come here.” Charles scooped David up onto his lap, careful of the neat orange skirt that this body was wearing, and took off his tiny kid backpack to hang it on the back of his chair. In his usual body, David tended to use his telekinesis to scramble around, so Charles thought he could use the help. David seemed fine, tucking himself against Charles willingly. 

 

“Hi Mr. Xavier!” Syd gave him a crisp handshake that normally would never have come out of David’s body. She was sometimes disorientingly mature for her age. Or perhaps David was just unusual for his. Charles did not really know how children were supposed to be at various points on the developmental timeline. That was the list: Learn to use hand controls, then study child development. 

 

“I’m going to show Syd my star lamp when we get back home,” David whispered up at him. Charles winced, then quickly schooled his face. The house was--well, he tended to deliberately ignore the state of the house aside from keeping the floors clear and any deadly objects out from the open, which likely meant, he knew in the back of his mind, that the house was not fit to be shown to people other than David.

 

“How about we go get ice cream instead?” Charles suggested. It was probably fine to bring David out. Whatever meltdown he’d had at school, he seemed calmer now that he was away and swapped with Syd. “It’s a nice day for it, after all.” David immediately kicked his feet, and his arms hovered up in excitement. His mind held the image of sunlight outlining a human silhouette. Syd, Charles noticed, glanced at David for his reaction before chirping her agreement. Ice cream then, it was settled. 

 

He had a hard time reading Syd when she was in David’s body. His powers presumably interfered, even with the inhibitor headpiece on, and even with his consciousness over in Syd’s body. A point of evidence for mutation being rooted in the body, Charles supposed. More concerningly, reading David was near impossible no matter which body he inhabited. It was always the same few flashes--the sunlight, blue smoke, a dog barking on a clear day, the bitter plastic of film on his tongue--with seemingly no correspondence to what David was saying or doing at the time. It all left Charles with a sense of unease he had an unusually hard time repressing, but he could hardly ask anyone about it. Asking questions about David’s behavior was what had gotten them into the whole current school situation in the first place. 

 

“Alright!” Charles clapped briskly. “Do you need to call your parents and tell them where you’re going?” he asked Syd. He already had his hands on his rims before he finished the sentence though; Syd never needed to call her parents. In fact, Charles had never even talked to Syd’s parents, which was probably a net benefit for him and his life as a reclusive academic. 

 

Syd shook her head no as usual, the wires on the inhibitor flopping goofily, and they were off, Charles making sure to go slowly enough that Syd could keep up. A bird briefly alit on the left arm of his chair, then fluttered off. It was a deep, unusual green. 

 

The kids started telling him a story about some dramatic happening at school, Syd finishing David’s whispery sentences. Apparently their friend Kerry had punched someone quite spectacularly. Charles, only half listening, could not quite tell if this had to do with her mutation, or if David and Syd found it impressive for some other reason, but he vaguely hoped that David would not be inspired to bring hitting into his repertoire. Flinging himself and objects around him about with his telekinesis when he was upset was alarming enough. 

  
  


When they arrived, the ice cream shop was crowded. Charles had ushered Syd ahead of them so he could maneuver through the narrow doorway, and the noise hit them abruptly. He felt attention on them prickle red in his mind. 

 

“Alright, David?” Charles tucked his chin into David, who had wrapped his arms around himself.

 

“I am pretty, I am loved,” David muttered, eyes closed. 

 

“Where’d you get that one?” Charles chuckled. 

 

“I am pretty, I am loved,” David repeated, this time in a British accent that matched Charles’ own.  He couldn’t read anything off his mind. 

 

“You are pretty, you are loved,” Syd echoed. She clasped David’s hand, awkward over Charles’ lap. 

 

“You are pretty, you are loved,” Charles haltingly finished. He really wasn’t sure sometimes what he was missing with this kid; not being able to use his telepathy on his telepathic child seemed a bit unfair. Nonetheless, his echoing seemed to assuage David, who uncurled himself. 

 

“We can get ice cream now,” David informed him, blinking up at him through Syd’s bangs. The hair in his own body was getting almost as long, but the last time Charles had suggested a trim, David had gone quiet for days, and a cat had suddenly showed up wandering around the house. They did not have a cat before, and they have not had a cat since. 

 

“Yes, yes, of course.” Charles wheeled them to the case displaying two neat rows of ice cream. Like a paint palette, the circles of soft color. David craned his head, entranced. 

 

“Do you need help?” asked the kid behind the counter, probably in a rush to get them out of the way. Before they could say anything, he continued, “We have apple, peanut butter, honeycomb crunch, blueberry caramel beer, lime carousel twist, lavender saffron, strawberry waffle, beef jerky, chocolate devouring, distant dream, and vanilla.” 

 

“What?” Charles said.

 

“I want the cherry pie,” whispered David. “On a cone.” 

 

“Can I have the peanut butter, Mr. Xavier?” asked Syd. 

 

“And for you, sir?” said the kid, already preparing David and Syd’s orders in smooth, effortless scoops. 

 

“Nothing for me, thanks.” Come to think of it, he might actually be lactose intolerant. He wasn’t sure. He could ask Raven if she knew, he supposed, but also he was aware that he should definitely not ask Raven. When was the last time she had picked up when he called? 

 

Ice cream acquired and the children already tucking in with gusto, (“Careful of my sweater,” Syd said mildly to David), Charles turned his gaze to the corner where he had felt attention on them ever since they had come into the shop, and yes, there they were.

 

“DAVID!” came a shatteringly loud kid-holler, with an accompanying mental shout of the exact same thing. A curly-haired girl waved frantically at them from behind a table in the back. David hopped down from Charles’ lap, carefully balancing his ice cream, and trotted on over. Charles wheeled himself behind, to where one of the chairs obligingly yanked itself away with a screech and left a place at the table for him, and wasn’t that a nice use of a mutation. 

 

Before he could see David sit down, a silvery blur flashed past him. “Oh, it’s the  _ girl _ ,” said the blur, who then skidded to a stop in front of Syd in David’s body. “Whatareyoudoing, why are you wearing that thing, didn’t you hear Wanda, c’mon-”

 

Charles ignored the little warning twinge of headache he got as his telepathy glanced off the boy’s whirlwind thoughts. David could handle himself, whatever Dr. Bird said, and he wasn’t going to  _ make  _ him behave in playground fights or whatever went on when David was around non-Syd children, he wasn’t. Charles instead propped his chin on his hands and gave his best charming look to, honestly, half the reason he had decided to take the kids out for ice cream in the first place-

 

“Hello, Charles,” said Erik. He had on his usual air of deadly, detached amusement--or so Charles thought. Something in his mind was oddly resistant to his mental touch, like reading words through the eyes of a child who did not know the language. But Charles rather liked a challenge. Or, well, he liked a specific kind of challenge. 

 

Erik took a sip of his ice cream float the same way a spy would take a sip of their martini. 

 

“Pi-e-tro!” Wanda was drawling meanwhile, “They’ve switched bodies again. That’s Syd, and  _ that’s _ David. Duh!” She really did have uncannily good instincts, he noted in the back of his mind, even though both Charles’ cursory scans of her mind and Erik himself said that she by no means had any sort of mental mutation. She marched right up to Pietro and somehow grabbed his arm from where he was flashing back and forth between Syd and David--a good thing she did, as Syd had put on a calm, focused expression that would never normally be found on David’s face, clearly ready to physically shove Pietro away from David. She tended to be rather protective, but well, trying to be more hands-off with David meant that he certainly wasn’t going to do anything about someone else’s kid. 

 

“Has it come to this again?” Erik asked. He had a fedora on over his dark curls, and it looked rather fetching. 

 

“Yes,” Charles said giddily. He wasn’t sure what Erik was talking about, other than yes, he did expect to see Charles, it was all groping around in the dark without his telepathy. But he wasn’t ever really quite sure what Erik was talking about, other than that there was so much history under his skin waiting for Charles, and Charles was ready to drown in it, or ready for it all to fall apart the moment he touched him. Not that he was a stranger to waking up in someone’s bed and things never being quite the same. He wondered sometimes if they had felt like Erik did. It was hazy in his memory. 

 

It was possible that he’d built this thing up too high in his mind. 

 

“Children!” barked Erik. His golden eyes shifted away from Charles for a second as he flicked his fine, long fingers out and Pietro and Wanda hovered in the air. Huh. Magnetic fields, he supposed. 

 

“I mean,” Charles continued in a lowered voice, wanting to tell  _ someone _ , “David had a bad day at school, and I’m taking him out for ice cream so he’ll feel better and because it’s not in the behavior plan his teacher gave me, if that’s what you’re asking.” He reached out for Erik’s ice cream float and took a large swallow, making sure to lick his lips showily for Erik’s slow gaze. 

 

Erik blinked, and looked away. “Is he still…” His spoon, untouched, made a tight circle in his tall glass. Charles had the abrupt feeling he had stumbled on one of Erik’s inexplicable sore spots, but when had he ever been able to stop? “Is he still in that program--”

 

“For mutant children? Yes.”

 

The spoon folded into a ball. “I was going to say for crazy children.”

 

“Erik!” Charles glanced at David, who appeared to have settled in a chair and for tolerating Wanda vigorously patting him on the head, paying no mind to the adults. He had known somewhere in the back of himself that Erik could be cruel, but not this pettily cruel. Not that there was unbanal cruelty. “We might be--friends, but you haven’t any right to say that kind of thing about David!”

 

“I wasn’t talking about--” Erik visibly took a deep breath. The spoon reshaped itself, probably smoother than before. “I’m sorry.” His green eyes looked dull. This was the other way Erik got, either impenetrable amusement or this distant weepiness. Charles’ chest felt tight, and at the same time hot with annoyance for Erik making him feel lost. “I just...would never,” Erik continued.

 

“I’m sorry,” said Charles, reflexively. He crossed his arms over his stomach. “I just can’t--they already think I’m not a particularly fit parent, you know. I know.” He knew, too, that he couldn’t explain to Erik the crushing panic that came not from just that, but from making any big choice about his son. He would take what was given to him there, special class or no. He had taken what was given to him, is how he got David. And a lot of his neuroses, probably. 

 

“Alright.” Erik closed his eyes. “Alright. They tried to put the twins in a segregated class like that, when they were younger.” An explanation, a peace offering? Charles wishes he knew. Erik skimmed the back of his right hand over his eyelids, and Charles had a terrible longing to touch the smooth brown skin of his face.

 

“Isn’t Wanda, ah, baseline though?” Charles said instead, fingers curled together and pressed below his mouth. Baseline and bossing the other kids around, by the sound of it. Vibrant where David was shy. He wasn’t bitter over how David was, he really wasn’t, but Erik should count himself lucky. 

 

Erik only put a smirk back on; Charles could practically feel its edges unfold across his face. “Do you really think that there’s much of a difference to them when you’re  _ like us _ ?” 

 

Charles barely stopped himself from saying the hundred things that popped into his mind. All of the differences between his family and Erik’s. “Er,” he responded, when it became obvious how long he’d been silent.

 

“Don’t worry about it.” Erik gave him a flinty, pointy smile and tapped the back of Charles’ hand with his index and middle finger, mercurial as always. Charles had to fight to remember his frustration at being dismissed in the face of this sweet, awkward gesture. 

 

“Thank you,” Charles told him, and tapped his hand back. Erik’s cheeks darkened. God, he was beautiful. Charles was going to let the whole thing go, of course. Sometimes talking with Erik felt like beating his knuckles against walls and hoping that some places were hollow. He’d let a lot of things go with Erik lately.

 

Lately?

 

It felt like there was something he wasn’t catching, even beyond his self-admitted (self-cultivated, really) obliviousness. 

 

“Alright,” he said weakly into the silence. He looked at his watch, and saw that it was--well, it was surely too late. It was a school night after all. David was delicate. “I’m sorry to say that we have to be on our way now, friend. David, Syd, it’s time to go home. Your parents must be worried, young lady.” He swore that, for a second, Syd gave him a look of pure contempt that children generally did not produce. What did he know about children, anyway? 

 

David obediently extracted himself from under Wanda’s arm and hopped back up into Charles’ lap, his weight against his chest feeling far away. Their afternoon had gone well, more or less. Why was he so...tired? Was that what this was?

 

Charles again had the thought that he was forgetting something. That he had something else to do, that he had to bury himself in books or bar himself up in his study and stare at a bottle of whiskey to avoid that too. An obligation. Raven or Gaby or--Jean? Or maybe he was just forgetting himself. 

 

Wanda looked at him levelly, almost disappointedly, in the shallow-breathed silence. Her eyes flashed scarlet like a predator’s at night, just for a moment. “Is this your maze, then?” 

 

Charles clutched David to him. He could see their minds all around, wreathed in red light, ready to burst at a push. His head hurt. He was being telepathically attacked. He was only having a panic attack. He was calm. He had broken something. He put his hand to his temple. “I--”

 

The night air was warm and sweet with chirping crickets as they walked back home. He felt calm for once. Charles thought that perhaps he would try to get out more with David, now that the weather had turned, maybe ask if David wanted to join a sport. Charles thought that perhaps he would even follow through on this thought this time. 

 

“Dad?” asked David, quietly. 

 

“Yes, sweetheart?” Charles spared a hand to ruffle through David’s spiky hair. He’d need a haircut soon. 

 

“Next time can Lenny come with us?” The sound of barking dog and blue sky, held in David’s mind.

 

“Of course,” Charles said absently, already thinking of proteins folded complicatedly into themselves, the path of the chains less the point than the overall shape of their labyrinthine structure. “She’s a nice girl, I’m sure.” 

**Author's Note:**

> All of Charles Xavier's life choices are not good, even the ones made while he is possibly trapped with some combination of his son, his ex, and his ex's daughter in a weird psychic maze. 
> 
> Okay, promised endnote about Magneto:  
> 1) I like having characters of color and I like Magneto a ton. This is a comics-based fandom, character traits change all the time.  
> 2) Mags has a history of being portrayed with darker skin and other racialized features, for racist and antisemitic reasons, all while canon tends to be cagey about his actual ethnicity. He very clearly is not treated as white by the other characters or the writers, and yet canon creators and critics often fall back on him being "technically white."  
> 3) Even though the movies have white actors play Magneto, fandom also definitely does the "portraying Erik with racialized features" thing, but specifically in contrast to Charles, who is portrayed as the whitest person ever. Thus, there's a weird gross dynamic of Erik being the dark sexual aggressor in contrast to Charles' white purity. Making Erik explicitly not white throws a lot of this into view.


End file.
